Goodbye 2009 – Here’s what I liked

OUNDLE — There’s always some good that comes every year. I get great pleasure out of those little celebrated innovations. Here are a few of my favourite from this past year.

The end of tinned food — My twelve-year-old daughter asked me what a can-opener looks like and how to use one. As a child growing up in Canada last century, and here in the UK too, no one could make it to 12 without a good knowledge of watery peaches, and corn, and spam…

But we can buy all that fresh in shops now. That’s gotta be progress.

America let’s poor people be sick — Universal healthcare is common in almost every country I have lived in. Now the United States get it too. Who would have thought it. And all without too much rending of garments.

I sat with a very successful retired Doctor at a baseball game in Cape Cod this summer. He explained why the US didn’t need universal healthcare. “They say 30 million people don’t have health cover. But I know about 25 million of those are illegal immigrants anyway…”

Yes, it didn’t work for me either.

Indestructible footballs — I don’t know why I find this strange. But one of Sting’s buddies is pushing the idea of footballs that cannot be broken, punctured, etc. to give to kids in war zones. I am still not convinced this isn’t a hoax. No question it is a nice sentiment, etc. But the idea that your whole village and family could be wiped out… but at least you’d have a football…?

I’m not sure.

My Quote of the Year — “People say stupid things. Get over it.”

So says my very large, black American friend who is virtually the only black executive in his mid-western town.

I wish I could share his sentiment more often. In other words I wish that I wasn’t affected by what people said. And I wish I never said stupid things.

Geeks of the world, unite— There was a breathless link on Twitter this week. “You can now wear your handle,” it said. Which sounds a bit awkward to civilians. But in fact, it was this: http://survivalofthehippest.com/

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